1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to magnetic tape recording heads, and more particularly to a tape recording head having a plurality of planes of transducer arrays to enable close or overlapping read and/or write transducers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In magnetic storage systems, data is read from and written onto magnetic recording media utilizing magnetic transducers commonly referred to as magnetic heads. Data is written on the magnetic recording media by moving a magnetic recording head to a position over the media where the data is to be stored. The magnetic recording head then generates a magnetic field, which encodes the data into the magnetic media. Data is read from the media by similarly positioning the magnetic read head and then sensing the magnetic field of the magnetic media. Read and write operations are independently synchronized with the movement of the media to ensure that the data can be read from and written to the desired location on the media.
An important and continuing goal in the data storage industry is that of increasing the density of data stored on a medium. For tape storage systems, that goal has lead to increasing the track density on recording tape. Because of the ongoing desire to increase data storage density on tape media, it is desirable to reduce the track width and increase the number of tracks recorded across the tape. In one configuration of multitrack tape heads, commonly used in tape recording systems, a linear array of alternating read heads and write heads is formed on a substrate. As the track spacing is reduced, it becomes increasingly difficult to fabricate arrays of MR sensors closely spaced apart on the substrate. Similarly, it becomes difficult to fabricate arrays of write transducers. Fabrication of two or more read sensors extremely close together presents a number of problems with thin-film processing tolerances in addition to instability, noise and cross talk between two such elements. Similarly, fabrication of two or more write transducers extremely close together presents processing problems. Therefore, there is an ongoing need for a multitrack tape recording head that overcomes these limitations and provides an array of read or write transducers capable of reading and/or writing very closely spaced or abutting data tracks.